OH… MY… GOSH.
I’m so glad you finished the story and made it all this way! Thank you! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
This is just an AUTHOR’S RANT BY THE WAY BUT IF SOME PARTS OF THE STORY CONFUSED THE HECK OUT OF YOU AND YOU ARE IN DIRE NEED OF AN EXPLANATION THEN YOU CAME TO THE RIGHT PLACE!
(Don’t read this if you haven’t finished the story. Seriously, I mean it. It will ruin the reading experience.)
WARNING:
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
•The title of the story literally comes from a background music I’ve accidentally come across while I was aimlessly scrolling through YouTube (What Lies Beneath) and that thing is so damn good it got stuck in my brain and even served as a major inspiration for the plot! I EVEN LISTENED TO IT WHILE BRAINSTORMING AND WRITING!
•Bea Blessing is actually my username hahahahahaha-
(THE PROPER TIMELINE:)
Something Sinister is Happening in Mariana Islands.
•The title is literally the plot.
•I’m considering this as a filler type of chapter. Yeah, nothing serious here. Just a taste of what’s to come.
•The quote stated in the beginning of chapter one was said to be attributed to Anacharsis. Okay, so who the heck is Anacharsis? He was a Scythian philosopher; he travelled from his homeland on the northern shores of the Black Sea and all the way to Athens, in the early 6th century BC.
•If you didn’t find this creepy enough for you guys then I’ll give you something to be creeped at: all of the events in Casey Liu’s compiled articles are actually based on real incidents that have been reported in Mariana Islands (but don’t worry no sea monsters are involved… I think–) so… yeah, be careful when you’re in the ocean.
•Fun fact: some of the names from the journalists in the newspaper came from my aunts’ names! Hi tita! Thank you for listening to my rants hahahahah-
•Here’s another! My birthday is in February 3!
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
•The character design of Sasraja is mostly inspired from me binge-reading H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos and a bunch of other sailor superstitions as well as the video game that my brother showed me (Subnautica) which literally inspired the description of the other monsters serving under it–or maybe this is just me ranting why I’m so scared of octopi…. or squids or shrimps and centipedes and crabs. Those things looked evil, I swear. Very sus.
•Other than that, the idea of thalassophobia (also known as fear of the ocean) has long since fascinated me so I thought, why the heck not try writing a story about it?
•I’m not sure if I’ve made this little tidbit clear enough but the book that Leigh Anne Song found hidden in her aunt’s porch is actually made of human skin.
•Leigh Anne is actually a name of my classmate in senior high. She’s not half-Chinese though but I’ve always liked the sound of her name and she’s so nice to me so… yeah hahahahah thank you for the inspiration!
•The title actually came from a quote by William Shakespeare’s Tempest (“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”)
•To be honest, I almost scraped out the entire scene of Lee Song sacrificing a baby because originally, she was supposed to just skin it alive before it dies a slow, ugly death–but I got squeamish when I re-read the details of the first draft and didn’t really want to get my book reported for such detailed gore. But on the second draft, I was satisfied so I had to amp up the creepiness factor so yeah: have fun with the freaky, cultish scene. No regrets here. Just a bit.
•If it wasn’t clear enough then yes, LEE SONG IS A PART OF THE CULT. Some of the people (such as the children) Leigh Anne have mentioned seeing in her vision actually came from the babies the cult have been kidnapping and sacrificing to ‘it’ throughout the years.
•In the second part, Sasraja had actually woken up… if only briefly.
Pray for us Sinners (now and at the hour of our deaths)
•This story and overall setting is loosely based on a Japanese folklore my grandmother once read to me when I was still in grade school and I remembered liking it very much. I think it’s called ‘the Earthquake and the Wave’; the story goes like this: it was about an old, rich man who saved the people of his small fishing village from a tidal wave by setting fire to the rice fields to get their attention.
•The title came from the Hail Mary prayer.
•The poem on the beginning of the chapter is entitled ‘To Cruel Ocean’ by one of my favorite authors: Victor Marie Hugo.
What belongs to the Sea… will always belong to the sea.
•The title is actually a quote from another of my favorite authors, Rick Riordan. In his story, that quote was said by a Nereid.
•May 20 is my grandmother’s birthday.
•My brother and I have three names: Allen and Denise are just one of it that I’ve picked up. And yes, similar to the character, there are times that I do pass out ‘without a warning’.
•If what happened to Wilson isn’t creepy enough, then here’s another: 12° 3′ 55.44″ N, 144° 34′ 52.08″E is actually the real coordinates of Sirena Deep. And yes, the place does exist, it’s REAL. Originally named the HMRG Deep, Sirena Deep was discovered way back in year 1997 by a team of scientists from Hawaii; it’s directly measured depth of 10,714 m (35,151 ft) and was largely unexplored. I couldn’t even find a lot of information about it on the internet!
•Sirena Deep is third only to the Challenger Deep and Horizon Deep, currently the deepest known directly measured places in the ocean (but in the story, Wilson’s team somehow wandered around at 200-250 meters deep… and that was right where they found the remains of one of Sasraja’s ‘spawns’): this lies along the Mariana Trench, 200 kilometers to the east of the Challenger Deep and 145 km south of Guam.
•And here’s a fun fact! I only found out about the reason of Sirena Deep’s name right after I decided (SPOILER ALERT!) Wilson ain’t dying but gonna be a mutated merman for the rest of his sad, miserable life hahahahah wait WHY AM I LAUGHING–
•The name of Sirena Deep is said to be a reference to a folk tale in Guam about Sirena, a young girl who was turned into half fish because of her disobedience. Sounds familiar?
What has sunk shall rise again
•This part was actually a separate one shot horror story I’ve written way back in 2016 that I somehow ended up trashing and forgetting about… so it just sat there in the recycled bin for that long when I accidentally browsed through and saw this last October, 2021.
•The unedited version was like, barely reaching 1.8k words but it somehow spiraled and completely went out of my control (like how the hell did it turned from a barely 2k into more than 11k words?!) when I edited the heck out of it for two days straight instead of being a good student and reviewing for final exams shhhhHHH–
•One of the scenes was actually influenced by a belief in the Philippines regarding the supernatural, such as: ‘you can tell whether someone is a monster by looking into their eyes. If your reflection is upside down, then they are not truly human.’
•If the last bit was confusing, similar to how Leigh Anne was being taken, Valiant was actually being spirited away by Sasraja. The major difference is Sasraja was lucid enough to speak here since it got its seven sacrifices plus one Valiant.
•The Asian lady, if you haven’t guessed, was actually Lee Song… or is it?
•Might as well say it if no one’s picking up on it: the protection circle/circle shape actually has a major significance to the story.
Still waters run deep
•This part is, hands down, A FAVORITE. I had way too much fun writing this story from a logical character’s point of view–a parent and a doctor at that!–grappling with sheer parental instinct: Li-Am Song feeling something is going horribly wrong but having no proof/evidence and not wanting to trigger his kid (who just went through something traumatic) with a direct confrontation is just so satisfying to put into words.
•The title of this chapter: “Still waters run deep” is actually a favorite saying of mine. AND I’M SO GLAD I CAN FINALLY ADD THIS ONE IN A STORY!
•The nurse had mentioned Leigh Anne had “old/closed” wound marks littered all over on her back. It wasn’t fully emphasized and got the attention it truly deserved since Leigh Anne woke up but food for thought: what do you think caused those?
•If it wasn’t obvious enough then, yes: Leigh Anne WAS already ‘possessed’ by Sasraja way back before Raven even got in the picture.
SOS
•The deepest part of the ocean is called the Challenger Deep and is located beneath the western Pacific Ocean in the southern end of the Mariana Trench, which runs several hundred kilometers southwest of the U.S. territorial island of Guam.
•Challenger Deep is approximately 36,200 feet deep.
•It is located in the Western Pacific Ocean, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench near the Mariana Islands group. According to the August 2011 version of the GEBCO Gazetteer of Undersea Feature Names, the Challenger Deep is 10,920 m (35,827 ft) ±10 m (33 ft) deep at 11°22.4′N 142°35.5′E. This location is in the ocean territory of the Federated States of Micronesia… so yeah, it’s REAL.
•Named after the British Royal Navy survey ship HMS Challenger, whose expedition of 1872–1876 made the first recordings of its depth. The high water pressure at this depth makes designing and operating exploratory craft difficult.
•The quote Doctor Origami was talking about: ‘look into the abyss and the abyss shall look back at you’ actually came from Friedrich Nietsze and was a favorite quote of mine. I think it was fitting considering just how dark the bottom of the ocean is; it feels like somewhere in the darkness, there’s someone staring right back at you.
•The title literally means ‘save our ship’… or souls. Whichever works.
•…when I re-read the entire story, I realized this chapter is probably the only one where Sasraja was the one whose personally causing the damage instead of her cult or her spawns (seriously, the crew of Submerged have such an awful luck). Jacob/i is actually Wilson Blanc's old diving partner.
•Well, in its defense, pesky humans poking around its resting place have disturbed an eons’ worth of slumber so no wonder it’s not in a good mood.
I must not sleep
•Fun fact: Kit-Kat (Gemini’s cat) is actually named and modeled after my Bengal cat whose name is surprise, SURPRISE Kit-Kat; but unlike Gemini’s mini guardian angel, mine is an absolute MENACE WHO OBLITERATES APPLIANCES FOR FUN.
•Cats actually play an important role in the story though. If you haven’t noticed, Raven’s mom (Leigh Anne) has a cat too–the sassy Chunky–and he’s not only there for cuteness or comedic relief because similar to Kit-Kat, they both become very aggressive whenever Sasraja’s influence is getting stronger/ nearer. They serve as a warning signal and a bodyguard to their unsuspecting humans because for some reason, Sasraja is not a fan of cats.
•I’m a cat lover through and through and I feel so sorry that Gemini has to lose her’s like that. Seriously, why is it that I feel so guilty killing a cat in a freaking story but I feel absolutely nothing when I killed off other characters? It’s weird.
•If you pay attention to Gemini’s dreams you’ll realize that she’s actually seeing the past (as well as future) events that had happened throughout the story. Can you guess which is which?
Hymn of the Lost and the Damned
•yes, yes, YES! It’s a continuation of Chapter SOS.
•The sounds Sasraja makes is actually the same thing that Raven has read about which had been reported way back in Chapter One.
•Sasraja doesn’t really eat people–but it had been sleeping for a really long time. It was just playing with them the same way someone amuses themselves with tearing off an insect’s limb.
•Sasraja can see in the dark but just got confused.
•I forgot to put the name in of the would-be survivor that Doctor Origami and Captain Tomes managed to find but this person is actually Jacob(i), Wilson Blanc’s usual diving partner who was only mentioned once.
•I imagine Sasraja’s hymns to sound like a siren’s song; those were meant to lure sailors to their watery deaths. But in this case, her’s were meant to drive someone mad.
The Sacrificial Lamb
•I just finished reading H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon to distract myself from the upcoming semester and this is the consequence.
•WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST WRITE?
In Media Res
•Like the rest of the story, it is told in snippets and flashbacks narrated in a nonlinear fashion.
•The quote written in the beginning of the special chapter is originally written in Arabic. But that’s basically what Sasraja’s cult had been saying/singing which doesn’t make sense to the other characters that were unfortunate enough to hear it because in the story, they were usually saying this phrase in Sasraja’s language.
•“Come child, fall with us too… for what has fallen may rise anew,” is actually meant to praise Sasraja/The Fallen God and to curse the one who hears it.
•So yeah, they all didn’t stand a chance.
•This chapter is basically about Leigh Anne’s last waking moments (the car ‘accident’ Raven was talking about in the first two chapters) as well as her final conversation with Sasraja.
•THE STORY HAS FINALLY GONE FULL CIRCLE!

When I first wrote What Lies Beneath the Sea, I’ve already made up my mind to write it with a bad (or at least an ambiguous) ending from the get-go because in the story, even when it has come to its end–which first started with Raven Fall discovering his mother’s (the main character, Leigh Anne Song-Fall’s) compiled findings about Sasraja, a fallen eldritch of some sorts that was supposedly worshipped as an elder god way back in humanity’s earliest history–a full circle that leads Raven into meeting Grace Blanc aka. Bea Blessing. And then, there’s the main antagonist and real driving force of the plot: Sasraja was loosely based from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu but I decided to tackle more on about the idea of exploring the depths of the ocean and the idea of invoking thalassophobia (fear of large bodies of water/ocean) as well as the consequences of said phobia.
The story was literally meant to be confusing. It was told in a non-linear fashion which made the story look like it was just a compilation of scary stories about the ocean (similar to how Raven found out about his mother’s involvement with the cult) but if you looked into the tiny details I’ve sprinkled around, you’ll realize that some of the characters have actually encountered with one another or are loosely connected. Look for the bed crumbs, I’ll let you figure this one out. I’m so glad you gave this story a chance!
From the bottom of my heart THANK YOU!
Stay safe!
-Bea Blessing.